1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of application design. In particular, the present invention provides a computer implemented method of estimating translation costs before or during the design stage of a software application.
2. Description of the Related Art
When developing a software application, an important consideration is the cost of translating text information associated with the software application. This text may be embedded help, on-line help, user and/or technical manuals, and/or implementation documentation. Due to the growth of the Internet and the forces of globalization, an application developer is now able to distribute a software application globally to a number of different countries with different linguistic requirements. Additionally, it is also possible to provide a web based interface for an on-line application that can be accessed over the Internet by users speaking a plurality of languages; for example, a global firm may wish to provide a common software application to users in the United States of America, India and China. For complex software applications, distributed to a large number of heterogeneous users, the cost of translating related text can be considerable.
A software application is typically developed in a primary language and text related to this application is then translated into one or more secondary languages. As the text relating to the application is typically written in line with the development of the application, in the prior art, the problems of translation were typically addressed at the end of product development. For example, in the past, the word count of user assistance text in the primary language has been counted only on the completion of the software development. At that point, a translation budget was announced and decisions were made retrospectively about translation priorities in the light of how much translation was affordable. It was, therefore, impossible for user assistance writers to estimate the overall translation cost at any point prior to the end of software development.
Hence, in the art, there is a requirement to provide a solution that allows the translation cost of a software application to be predicted in advance of the development and/or release of the application; predetermined budget requirements to be met; and certain text content to be prioritized for translation.